Connector for SharePoint - multiple tables

Posted by Community Admin on 03-Aug-2018 10:10

Connector for SharePoint - multiple tables

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Posted by Community Admin on 18-Mar-2013 00:00

When I look at the Connector for SharePoint video (www.sitefinity.com/sharepoint-integration) I see that you can do a list to a sitefinity library. We have today a solution in version 3.7 where we can write caml questions and also have a script language that you can use on the page to link different querys to each other.
For example. We have a list of products and another with all images for each product. We run first query to get the products and then a linked query to get the images related to the product/products. 
Is there any way we could achive this with connector for SharePoint, or linking libraries in any way, or is the connector only list <--> library ? 


Posted by Community Admin on 18-Mar-2013 00:00

Hello Jan,

Thank you for contacting us.
That's pretty interesting implementation I must say. 

For the time being, we'll support List < - > Library implementation, which means that you won't be able to relate libraries out of the box. We are doing something else tough - we make it possible that you sync List to a Dynamic Module on the Sitefinity side, again two-way sync. In the dynamic module itself, it's pretty easy to add new fields and relate them to any data - be it a library, the blogs module, or just any type of content. I guess this will get the job done. What do you think about this approach?

Thinking about it more, this is probably the approach we should follow, because the Connector would not know about all possible business logic on how the data should be related or processed, but once imported, the CMS should make it easy to relate or process this data additionally. You can even hook up a custom WWF-workflow for this purpose, once you have all data in the system.

We are very interested in hearing your opinion here. Thank you once again for your interest in this matter. 

Greetings,
Georgi
the Telerik team
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Posted by Community Admin on 18-Mar-2013 00:00

Thanks for quick answer. 

I think you (telerik) are on the right track. If we had made our solution with sync I guess we would store the seperated tables in diffrent libraries (or external db) and then joined them in a module. I'm guessing what you're after with your solution is a simple way to get data from a standard list in sharepoint and make a easy form (or whatever) on public web to fill it. 

I'm thinking I will not be able to replace any of my existing solution without "hard work" if I would like to replace it with connector + modules. The upside is that if we would do that there is a simple and "in product solution" for us to use, which is good.

A BIG backside with our solution is that linked lists can have serious consequence on performance. And also that it was hard (not to say impossible) to make a good and easy interface for the user/editor to handle. For now we have xml templates how to fetch data and you have to be fairly good with computer/programming to get a hang of how it works.

Posted by Community Admin on 18-Mar-2013 00:00

Hello again Jan,

Yes, once we sync the list to the dynamic modules, we actually create new data type in Sitefinity, which has the same fields as the sharepoint list. We generate an API for this dynamic type, create all the widgets for interacting with this data, as well as security and workflow, so this list starts to act like Sitefinity data. Of course, changes that a user do goes back to Sharepoint. At this point is very easy to extend this type, since Sitefinity has an API to work with it directly.

We are planning improvements to this connector. Let me know if you wish to see something specifically, I hope we'll be able to include in the plan after the 6.0 release. 

Greetings,
Georgi
the Telerik team
Do you want to have your say in the Sitefinity development roadmap? Do you want to know when a feature you requested is added or when a bug fixed? Explore the Telerik Public Issue Tracking system and vote to affect the priority of the items

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